


Powerless

by tfm



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 08:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20150671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: Beau's feeling a little wrecked after fighting the Remorhaz.She and Fjord have a night-time chat.Nice, short, mid-episode coda to Episode 73.





	Powerless

Beau’s on the back of the fucked up insect-worm creature (she should remember the name of them, she’s sure she’s read about these things before (she looks it up again, much later, it’s called a Remorhaz)) when she realizes that things might be about to go south.

It’s dropped Jester (good), who is now a mammoth (good, but a little confusing), and it doesn’t seem to like the fact that there’s something on its back, punching (not good. At all). Then it flicks Beau up in the air, and catches her in its jaws. She’s fast, but not nearly fast enough to stop its teeth from piercing into her shoulder and stomach.

It’s looking a little dicey, but, she remembers that Yasha has her—

Oh yeah.

Shit.

There’s fire, and pain, and that’s the last thing she remembers for a little while.

She wakes up, a little while later, to Jester kneeling over her, a look of consternation on the tiefling’s face. ‘I’m a cleric,’ Jester says. She has an almost wistful look on her face. ‘Man, I think I could have killed it.’ A pause. She looks down at Beau. ‘I’m glad you’re back and stuff.’

‘Why aren’t you like...a wizard, or a sorcerer?’

‘I don’t know!’

Beau uses her staff to stand, and then bashes it into the creature’s side. The heat emanating from the creature burns her skin almost as badly as the first time she’d punched it.

Beau stares up at the creature. It doesn’t look like it’s anywhere near going down, and she...well, she’s on her last legs. It’s the first fight they’ve been in since losing Yasha, and it almost ends as badly as that one had.

Beau knows she can get a couple more punches in. She clenches her fist, and she….runs away.

She’s barely been conscious for a minute, and already she feels like she’s going to pass out again. Her body is covered in burns from the wounds the staff had left, and there’s maybe a few tears that mix with the blood and sweat on her face, and…

And she fucking runs away.

Beau’s never run away from a fight in her fucking life, but for some unfathomable reason, her brain has decided that now is the time to start. She’s barely thirty feet away when Jester kills the thing with a pretty fucking sweet _Guiding Bolt_, and it takes all the energy that Beau has to get back over there and see what she can do to help (but not before vomiting up the breakfast she’d eaten just hours before).

Not much, as it turns out. Caduceus is _inside_ the thing, and Fjord’s gone to get him, and there’s not a single fucking thing that Beau has in her repertoire that could help this situation, so she mumbles something that doesn’t seem to pass through a word filter, and passes out once again.

When she wakes up, it’s feeling a reasonable amount better (but still like shit), and everyone is sitting around and not panicking, so it seems like the threat has passed.

Fjord’s looking down at her as she sits up with a gasp. He looks rough. ‘Did you die too?’ she asks. It had been pretty fucking bad, surely she’s not the only one that got fucked up. ‘Who all died?’

They lie through their teeth for a few moments, tell her that everyone had gone down, which tells her almost certainly that none of them had. Even Fjord, abandoned by his patron, had been more useful in that fight than she had.

He had almost certainly saved her life, according to the quick debrief that they have while Caduceus runs through a prayer of healing. Him, and Caleb, and Nott, with Jester coming in for the (reluctant) heal. Beau gives them all an appreciative sort of nod, eyes not quite meeting their gaze. ‘We could go right now,’ Beau says, when the prayer is done. She feels like shit, but the last things she wants is _them_ knowing that.

They walk for another few hours after that, and in spite of the healing, Beau’s feeling pretty rough. Her vestments are torn from the creature’s teeth, and her skin is covered in burns, and _everything_ is covered in blood. Her blood.

It’s not the first time she’s been covered in blood, and it’s probably not going to be the last. She rebuffs all offers of help as they stumble through the woods, and she’s certain that she’s slowing them down.

When they finally climb into a tree to rest for the evening (Beau ignoring the offers of help from Fjord and Jester), Beau falls asleep almost instantly. She’s rudely awoken what feels like seconds later by the branch that they’re resting in crashing to the ground.

She lays there, unmoving in the snow, staring up at the sky. The velvety blackness is criss-crossed with branches. She’s vaguely aware of the rest of the group talking, discussing, probably, what they’re going to do now. Beau doesn’t particularly want to move, but doesn’t resist when Caleb pulls her to her feet.

As much of a dead weight as she is, it must take all of his strength. Still, he looks in better shape than any of them, and leads the way as they move up onto the mountain-side where, hopefully, they’ll be safe.

Now that they’re safe, and in the dome, and hopefully free to get as much rest as they need, Beau can’t sleep.

It’s fucking stupid.

She’s clearly not the only one, though, because after an hour or so of staring at the transparent ceiling of the dome, Beau hears a, ‘Are you awake, Beau?’

The voice throws her at first; Fjord’s new (or old, she supposes) accent is still something that she’s going to have to get used to.

‘How could you tell?’ Beau says, finally, after she’s mustered up the energy to sleep. Then she realizes. No snoring. ‘Just still a bit wired, I guess.’ A pause. ‘That was some pretty dope shit you pulled today, dragging me out of the jaws of death. Mad respect.’

Fjord seems to hesitate. ‘I just did what anyone would do.’

‘Nah, man. Grappling a fucking megaworm with no powers, knowing it could fuck you up, too. That takes some serious fucking guts.’

More hesitation. ‘No more guts than going up against the strength of an evil God’s champion,’ he counters. It’s been less than a week since they’d escaped the King’s Cage, since they’d lost Yasha. Five days, now that Beau thinks about it. It feels like a lifetime. Hell, it’s only been about six months since they’d lost Molly. Even that is burned so deep into Beau’s brain that it could have been six years, and she’d still remember it as thought it were yesterday.

‘Well, first mate and all,’ Beau says with a shrug. ‘Seriously, though, thanks. I’m use to having...’ A pause. ‘Someone else at my back during those hairy moments.’ The longest hesitation yet. Beau knows that Fjord, of all of them, had taken Yasha’s actions as a betrayal. She sort of gets it, even though she doesn’t feel that way. ‘Guess I’m gonna have to be more careful for a while.’

Though she’ll never admit it to Fjord, it’s kind of nice to have someone else in the party that’s relying on their own strength, rather than arcane magic, or the gifts of gods. Makes her feel a little less...ordinary.

‘Until, we...y’know, find you your sword, and someone that can help kick Uk’otoa’s ass.’ She tries to keep the bitterness out of her voice. They won’t – can’t – let Fjord stay like he is for long. As crucial as he had been today, she doesn’t think he would be willing to go long without some kind of power. Some kind of boon. She’s not sure how that makes her feel, that he will have had the blessing of two powerful beings, whereas she can’t even manage to stay conscious through a fight with a giant worm.

Their conversation peters off after that. They get to Uthodern the next day, and it turns out that maybe forging an ancient sword is a little harder than they’d anticipated. That maybe, possibly, probably they’ll have to go and find a fucking_ dragon_ to get that sword forged.

Beau doesn't really want to think about how many times she'll die going up against a dragon. Doesn't want to think about how the fuck she's supposed to punch through thick hide, dodge (or not dodge, she supposes, if they want iceflex) its icy breath.

And once it’s done, maybe she’ll be alone in being powerless once more.


End file.
